TechNOIR

The punctuation could use some cleaning up, but the writing really works, short as the story is overall. Like Chris' last game this kind of tosses you into an in progress plot, but the atmosphere carries it and you don't really need to know the details of your mission or your character's life story to carry it out.

This one does some neat things in addition to the usual. The suggested soundtrack was a nice touch, and I really liked the concept of the 'suspicion meter' item, although it could have been integrated more into some kind of actual puzzle.

All the choices seem realistic enough, although a couple of times (well, one in particular...) the character is revealed to be a REAL DICK almost out of nowhere.

Anyway, here's a few notes I took as I went along:


The city is a flurry of neon lights and smog, thick, dark smog that chokes the surroundings and gives out lung cancer like there's no tomorrow. // I would have used a semi-colon after 'neon lights and smog'. Or found a way to rephrase the second half into its own sentence. It's a bit repetetive and the first section is a much stronger opening just on its own.

This suave assassin guy can't brush past someone without actually shoving her like a klutz and making a scene?

Actually on my first playthrough the guy just blasted his way past the guards, accidentally killed several guards and got wounded himself, then limped out 'content with a job well done'. So maybe 'suave' was the wrong assumption to make.

From the information given on the front page I assumed getting friendly with club girls would be a needless distraction, it wasn't until the next one I realized I needed to get into a VIP area (although the character already knew this) and I was basically locked into a brute force run and gun path at that point.

Holy shit. Went back and tried killing the stripper and, holy shit. What the hell kind of character am I playing here. D:


***


And about the punctuation, now:


As I said, there were some punctuation issues. Primarily with dialogue. Actually, everything I spotted was in the dialogue. Chris, you shouldn't feel bad because this is common with new writers, but I think it's time we have The Talk.

"Looking for a good time big guy?" She asks, placing a cold hand on your chest.

In this instance it should be:
"Looking for a good time, big guy?" she asks, placing a cold hand on your chest.

The dialogue tag is lower cased, as it's still part of the same sentence. (Note also that a comma goes before a name or nick name such as 'big guy' whenever someone is being addressed, although that's unrelated here.)

She flips you off, yelling. "Fuck you! You fucking homo fleshbag!" // There should be a comma after 'yelling'. Again, all one sentence.

"Thanks for the help, sweetheart," you say, drawing her closer. // This is correct, good job.

The basic rule of thumb is that anything that can be a sentence on its own is treated like one. If you'd dropped the 'you say' and just had a standalone action like, 'You draw her closer.' for instance, the dialogue previous to it would end in a period. Otherwise, in any situation with a 'he/she/you say(s)/ask(s) or other stand-in, use the comma (or exclamation point or whatever) and the tag stays lower cased.

I'm not going to paste every line of dialogue with an error here but it would be worthwhile going through on another edit pass.


***

All in all this was a quick, fun read, and yes I know the thing everyone keeps pointing out is that they're short, but a story should be only as long as it needs to be and in this case the length was a good fit for the plot. The pacing was better here than in the last game anyhow as there weren't any issues like the discrepancy between the laboratory and apartment segments. You seem to have gotten your linking and scripting issues sorted ahead of time too, I assume with Tim's help. Anyway, good job on this and keep 'em coming.

Let's get right into it.

This was definitely more game than story, and by virtue of that fact, it accomplished what a game like it should. So on the basest level I would say this game has close to no flaws, but the problem with this line of thinking ,however, is that just because a story has nearly no flaws; that doesn't mean it can't be improved upon. Normally in reviews I review the basic components of that story, and I'll pick them apart. All I'll be doing here, however, is suggesting improvements. You know, what the story could have been had you...etc. Basically I'll be explaining how this could be taken from a max 5/8 to a potential 8/8. Anyhow, I'll stop explaining how I'm going to do it and just do it.

Content: I think the world could really do with some fleshing out. I know it's a game without a ton of story, but fleshing out the world would make this loads more immersive. (Music set the mood pretty well by the way) More of a plot than just 'killing some guy in a club' would definitely take it up a notch or two. Setting could use some more fleshing out as well, but a little less, for the setting was already established pretty well.

Characters: We know next to nothing about all of the characters in this game. Again, it works because this is a very game oriented game, but showing us why we're assassins, or why our target needs to die would help. Without making the game too large, fleshing out the two of those characters would help the most. Adding more characters might be even better. Which brings me to my next point...

Difficulty: It was very easy. I got the worst and best endings within five minutes. It is simply so easy that I can't imagine many people spending more than 15 minutes on it. Increasing game length, branches, and difficulty would help a ton. Maybe have multiple missions? Or have puzzles to increase difficulty? Again, there are a ton of ways to do this. You need only choose the one most suited to you. (Didn't use either of the items at all)

All in all, it's a solid game. Could use some expansion, but was good for what it was. Well done.

It was short, but there were lots of options, and holy crap am I a badass. The action was well-choreographed, with precisely as much description as there needed to be, and it flowed smoothly with the rest of the story. The worldbuilding was nice, and painted an interesting picture without going /too/ in-depth.

If I had one gripe, it's that the story wasn't quite as noir as it could've been. You could've fit more wordbuilding in in a poetic tone and nobody would have minded, because that's just how Noir flows. I can see you've kinda sorta been doing that at various points, but I don't think you've really been getting into the main character's head to share all those coarse, world-weary remarks with us that the archetypal Noir story would have.

It also would've been nice to have more buildup to the execution. A longer briefing, maybe introduce the person hiring us, that sort of thing. From an action standpoint, it was great, but it's the character development of the assassin as well as the poor sap he's about to shoot that makes a lot of assassin stories compelling. Say what you will about the Hitman series, it was never exactly pulitzer writing, but they were pretty good at making you want to kill certain people or question your choices afterward if they really wanted to.

Still, having room for improvement doesn't mean it wasn't freakin' sweet, and I'm glad to see you really putting in effort lately. Can't wait to see how things go from here.

>RUN PROGRAM: MOTOR FUNCTION. ACTION: SPEAK.<
"I very much enjoyed it. The thing that helps complete it, is the choice in music. Anything from the Hotline Miami games is a good choice. The writing itself is brief and direct, enough to inform the player of the necessary facts, and a description of the surrounding environment, which makes a good deal difference to me."

Finished pretty quick apart from that well rounded story even though it is short plenty of options nothing feels forced apart from the main 'mission' if your looking for a quick cyberpunk noir story than I would recommend

Chris remains the king of the micro-story

It's a short storygame but still great, I like its balance of concision and detail. I got the good ending, by the way.

A very short game where you perform a contract killing at a strip club. There isn't anything really wrong with the story; perhaps it'd be slightly nicer to not have to add the gun and 6th sense to your inventory each time you restart. The game cannot achieve a higher score than 5 due to its brevity; there isn't enough space to create plot twists, to immerse the reader, or surprise them. It paints a simple picture and I find the answers a little predictable to how I imagine things might play out. There's nothing wrong with that, of course.

It's short, it's fun. Liked the style and the no-nonsense prose fitted the setting well!

Short but sweet